Rob, you ask ‘how’? You must understand that any explanation here with this little letters on a glowing screen will be in the manner of someone talking about a painting to a blind person. It’s important not to confuse appreciation/knowledge with wisdom.

A sense of it might be this. Your little one is sick, crying loudly and with no apparent consolation available. You notice he/she likes the rumble of the car so you drive around for no important reason just to ease the day for him/her. Your spouse gets off work and you trade and they go off and do the same thing. You get off work and she goes to sleep and it starts snowing. You can’t drive yourself much less the baby. You strap the baby’s car seat to a clothes dryer and get a book and coffee at 2:00 am and hit ‘fluff dry’. The buzzer goes off every hour, you hit it again. Then you all have breakfast together, she takes over and you go to work. Repeat. And you feel good about it.

Before the Cesarian operation women died in great numbers and young. Many of the widowers chose not to remarry and entered monasteries or if clergy became bishops. Religious men with no family support centuries ago who lost their wives in old age entered monasteries in the manner of modern retirement homes (though few lived into their late 40’s) and were celibates.

For those of you with no grey hair at all, celibacy later in life doesn’t mean anything like what it might to a 20 year old.

But of course celibacy frees you to live for others who are not of your immediate family, to spend your wealth on churches and charities instead of on your own children, to assist extended family and friends when they stand in need, or to dedicate yourself to arduous endeavors without the encumbrance of family. The old world relied on celibates to staff hospitals, schools, universities, ministries, and missions, both secular and religious. Christendom owed much of its greatness to celibates. It could not have afforded their services otherwise.

I’ve been pondering your statement about how those who are unmarried and do not have children have nothing really to offer to those who are married or who do have children. Perhaps you have a point.

How does one learn self-sacrifice as a positive good when the only person they need to care for is themselves? There is no need to develop a deeper sense of communion with others when the only sound you hear at night when you go to bed is your own voice echoing against the walls.

You will probably not have gone through the sense of concern and worry that parents do when their children first venture off to school for the first time, develop a serious illness or when they endure teasing from their peers. You don’t have the financial obligations when you have no spouse or children to support. You won’t have to sacrifice that luxury sedan for braces or schooling and tuition.

Relationships require you to learn to yield when there is disagreement. What types of compromises does one really have to make as a bachelor?

On the one hand, you’ve argued that priests should be at least permitted to marry because “it is not good for man to be alone” and because they will be able to better understand the needs of their congregants, yet you simultaneously argue that celibacy is a positive vocation, not just one of negation.

How?